


The Water-Bearer

by drainoctane



Category: Dark Souls (Video Games), Dark Souls III
Genre: Abuse of Authority, Blood and Gore, Cannibalism, Food Issues, Force-Feeding, Horror, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-12
Updated: 2019-06-12
Packaged: 2020-10-25 03:47:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20717591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drainoctane/pseuds/drainoctane
Summary: The newly-disgraced cleric Aldrich was caught between rage and despair. He’d been snatched from his quarters in the dead of night and carted clear from Irithyll to the windowless, lightless room in which he was currently locked, through miles of gods-know-where. The lovely niche he’d carved out for himself in Irithyll had been wrenched from him, likely for good, and likely by that bastard sorcerer who called himself Pontiff.The irony wasn’t lost on Aldrich that he could hear chanting through the walls, garbled and insane though it sounded when he could distinguish the words. He’d caught glimpses of the cathedral that imprisoned him – its statues were twisted, its clerics shadowed by strange compulsions. Had he ventured here in better standing, he might have wanted it as his home.





	The Water-Bearer

**Author's Note:**

> More DS3 sin, based on [this awesome prompt](https://drainoctane.tumblr.com/post/145759087978/ok-so-i-know-you-like-sulyvahn-refusing-to-condone). This time, Aldrich-origin-flavored. Warnings for food deprivation, mild forcefeeding, blood and gore, abuse of authority, clergyman touching, disbelief of Hawkwood’s timeline re: Aldrich, Pontiff Sulyvahn in general, and an interpretation of Aldrich where he gets shrill when he’s angry

I.  
  
  
The newly-disgraced cleric Aldrich was caught between rage and despair. He’d been snatched from his quarters in the dead of night and carted clear from Irithyll to the windowless, lightless room in which he was currently locked, through miles of gods-know-where. The lovely niche he’d carved out for himself in Irithyll had been wrenched from him, likely for good, and likely by that bastard sorcerer who called himself Pontiff.  
  
The irony wasn’t lost on Aldrich that he could hear chanting through the walls, garbled and insane though it sounded when he could distinguish the words. He’d caught glimpses of the cathedral that imprisoned him – its statues were twisted, its clerics shadowed by strange compulsions. Had he ventured here in better standing, he might have wanted it as his home.  
  
The chanting that rang through his own church had begun to sound like nonsense to him as well. If that masked sinner could claim a title for himself and it be taken in stride by his colleagues, if such an obvious undead abomination could take such liberties with the city of his birth –  
  
– if he could wake from such strange and powerful dreams every single night imagining and longing for the scent and taste of dead flesh, _man’s_ flesh –  
  
– then it stood to reason that the teachings by which he’d lived for so long could be fallible.  
  
  
  
The sin of doubt, in particular, wasn’t one Aldrich could despair over too greatly. That rested with him, and him alone. It was possible his faith was being tested by these shapeless specters that tormented him every night, only to disappear completely from his mind with the break of morning. If that was the case, the test had resulted only in the discovery of the precise number of mornings steeped in ineffable bloodlust it took to make Aldrich suspect that the clergy might not be his vocation after all.  
  
But he’d invested so much time into it! He knew the scripture by heart, and could recite and enforce the precepts with such studied accuracy! He’d hoped, as a young man, that the gods’ blessing would give him some bulwark against this curse of nightmares. It was maddening to note that, no matter how deeply he devoted himself, no matter the long hours of prayer or the dogged castigation of sinners, the vile tide that pulled at him only grew stronger with the passing of years.  
  
Lately he’d found himself nicking the scalps of young clerics with his blade as he tonsured their hair, presiding over their rites of atonement and demanding they punish themselves ever more severely, trying to call back what gnawed at his mind with the scent of blood, so he could analyze it in the daylight. Surely it had given some of his colleagues pause, but he hadn’t thought any of his actions worthy of outright imprisonment.

  
  
He couldn’t tell the hour, and the room was irritatingly spacious, such that he couldn’t keep his bearings in the dark. Sleep tempted him, but something in the air made him shudder at the notion. Aldrich slumped against a wall, sick of pacing the room. He sat, staring without thought into the impenetrable blackness, for what felt like hours.  
  
  
  
Aldrich’s eyes burned in the light that poured into the room, and he twisted on the floor, back arching itself upright. His eyes rolled down, and he stared into nothing for a moment before whipping his body around to face the open door. It shut abruptly behind a towering figure. Three candle-flames hung in the air, the only thing Aldrich could see. His jaw hung, and he panted, heart pounding in his ears, fingernails scraping stone.  
  
The candles lit the mirrored surfaces of a three-tined candelabra, the pale shoulders of unfamiliar vestments some ten feet off the ground, the featureless, scarred mask. “Steady, Aldrich,” boomed the impudent voice.  
  
Blood was in his mouth, so very little. It tasted like the waters of a buried ocean. He wanted to go on tasting it. He groaned as it dissipated from his mouth – he had bitten his tongue.  
  
“You seem restless.”  
  
Aldrich crouched silently where he was, collecting himself, trying to summon the appropriate distaste for the desire that coursed through him. He pulled his knees under him and rose to his feet, leaning heavily on the wall. His blood was racing through him still. “I –” he began, and then shifted his tack as the world returned to him. “Of course I’m restless,” he growled. “I’ve gone to bed in a church, and awoken in a dungeon.” He glared at the false pontiff, where his eyes should have been. “What is this place?” His voice cracked slightly. “Why am I here?”  
  
There was a pause, and the silence filled Aldrich’s head. “Tell me what you saw.”  
  
For a moment, Aldrich was furious, until he noticed he could remember parts of the vision. Something had reached up from the very bottom of the world, and it had called out in a voice like the humming of primordial life, and waited as if for his own response.  
  
“You seem tormented,” the pontiff teased. “My theory is that the source of your agony is something this cathedral was built to contain.”  
  
Aldrich had to physically move in order to break his reverie. He shifted unsteadily from one leg to the other. “S-so you’ve brought me _closer_ to it?” Aldrich’s voice was shrill with outrage, and his hands shook. “To what end do you plan to throw me into the mouth of madness?”  
  
The pontiff made a noise like a clipped sigh – he sounded, of all things, amused. “Your eyes aren’t the eyes of a man who would go mad here.” Aldrich frowned at the summation, but kept quiet. “I’ve seen the way you stalk after the young clerics, the way you have nothing planned for them when you catch up. Wherever you go before you wake – whatever is with you,” the tall creature prodded, “you bring some of it back.”  
  
Aldrich pressed a hand against the wall and lowered himself back onto the floor. He wrapped his arms around his waist.  
  
  
  
II.  
  
  
The cathedral was mazelike, and even though Aldrich had been allowed free roam of it, he couldn’t escape it if he wanted to. Whatever was held here – the Deep, as the pontiff referred to it, with an uncharacteristically honest note of reverence – was well restricted to the bounds of the cathedral. However, given the strange weight of the air and the unseemly rituals and depravities that lurked behind even its unlocked doors, Aldrich came to suspect that its corruption stalked the halls just as freely as he did.  
  
The clerics were, in truth, less frightening than they appeared. The undead were more loquacious than the living, as the latter tended to be immersed in reciting verses in order to stave off what had become of their elders. Nevertheless, Aldrich’s conversations with them tended to be regrettably brief before the clerics slipped into sudden entranced silence or incoherent, ecstatic speech without audience.  
  
As it stood, the only soul with whom he could converse properly was Pontiff Sulyvahn, whose name he’d only gleaned from the clerics’ murmurings. He was, invariably and to Aldrich’s chagrin, perched at Aldrich’s bedside every morning, and he patiently bore the attacks that Aldrich mounted with ever-greater frequency in the wretched minutes after sleep. If Sulyvahn was to be believed, in addition to the reports of unintelligible vocalization, Aldrich had, on a few recent occasions, risen from his bed and wandered toward the interior of the cathedral, leaving his waking self to hope against hope that the pontiff had the decency to lead him back to his chamber.  
  
He remembered the turbulent creature that tormented him, and he remembered, each morning, that it had spoken to him. Recently, he recalled attempts to call out to it, and a distinct feeling that it was displeased by the shape of his voice.  
  
  
  
III.  
  
  
“What are you on about, ‘as it should be?’” If truth be told, Aldrich’s bewildered outrage was only half-honest. For one, he hadn’t expected Sulyvahn to be helpful when confronted with the news that Aldrich had caught sight of himself in a mirror recently to find that, in addition to his hair having grown shaggy and uneven, his teeth tapered to inhuman points. For another, Aldrich wasn’t entirely displeased with the change.  
  
Nonetheless, it would have been kind of the self-involved pontiff to even address it as something that might be causing Aldrich some amount of stress.  
  
“You look more yourself,” Sulyvahn evaluated with a shrug, “although I admit your hair needs trimming.”  
  
  
  
IV.  
  
  
“Is this all there is?”  
  
Sulyvahn canted his head with the same all-knowing amusement as always. “I thought you were accustomed to the ascetic lifestyle, Aldrich.”  
  
Sulyvahn thankfully saw fit to include a generous portion of meat with Aldrich’s meals. He’d found it simultaneously tough and undercooked, when he first encountered it, but he had come to crave it, especially in the early hours. Though the food he was given was no more or less than he’d ever eaten, Aldrich seemed to be shedding weight in an alarming fashion.  
  
  
  
He bit his tongue more often now, attributable to unfamiliarity with the newly dangerous teeth. Sometimes it was honest error; other times, he was distracted from a daydream by the taste of his own blood. He’d freed himself of his thoughts more than a few times to find Sulyvahn watching him from across the room, noticing the curve of his spine and the way his mouth hung open.  
  
Presumably he was more fascinating to watch now than before. His face and neck were carved thin, and his hair grown long. The clean-cut lines of his throat and the diabolic teeth, set just the same as they’d always been, stood out to him when he dared to look.  
  
And the way the clerics milled through the halls, caught up in devotion, always so unaware of his presence – Aldrich didn’t know what to make of the fact that his posture seemed ready to spring at them.  
  
  
  
V.  
  
  
In the absence of meals, Aldrich devoured books. He lost himself in half-mad accounts of the Deep, to the unease or encouragement of the clerics, depending on the length of their tenure in the cathedral. Though the words were disordered, and the tomes often incomplete, the scrambled descriptions pulled familiar strings in Aldrich’s brain.  
  
Sulyvahn only brought meals to him in the mornings, anymore. Aldrich had no idea from where; it seemed no one in the wide, yawning expanse of the cathedral felt hunger in quite the way he did, and he couldn’t find a kitchen despite his hours of wandering. Aldrich had never been a solidly built man, but in the time he’d spent in the cathedral, he’d gained a great many shadows and angles, and the bones of his shoulders seemed sharp enough to cut. He was beset by the aching emptiness of his throat in a way he’d never felt it before visiting this accursed place.  
  
  
  
“Why is it you only bring me breakfast lately, Pontiff?” Aldrich asked. He’d set upon his food this morning with notable enthusiasm, and eaten it within scant minutes of waking. If he didn’t know better, he’d say the tall man had seemed taken aback. “I’d fend for myself, but this place is a labyrinth, and I don’t think these mad clerics eat at all.”  
  
Sulyvahn was eerily still where he sat. The set of his shoulders made him seem like the thought hadn’t occurred to him. “The force of the Deep is a weird thing. It does tend to distract those in its thrall from things like supper.” He steepled his fingers, leaning back in his chair. “That said, I have a plan for you, Aldrich, and it happens not to involve any more than breakfast for the moment.”  
  
Aldrich sneered, setting his plate and silverware on a side table with a clatter. “What, do you mean for me to become one of those accursed fanatics?” With his loss of faith and the insistent presence of Sulyvahn, the undead had gradually ceased to bother Aldrich as much as they had. Nonetheless, the idea of becoming one himself rankled him. “Don’t you think you have enough?”  
  
The pontiff stood and gathered the dishes with deliberate primness. “My verdict stands.”  
  
“At least tell me what this is all _for_. It’s torturous.” Aldrich’s voice slipped too far into pleading for his own taste. He thumbed at his ribs through his light vestments – he’d washed and mended the ones he’d arrived in, rather than capitulating to the adoption of the undead clerics’ robes.  
  
Sulyvahn was gone before Aldrich could hear an answer, the door left ajar behind him. Aldrich yelled pitiful curses at the empty hallway beyond.  
  
  
  
But as he pored over the interminable passages of sinking, grasping, twisting of flesh, the hours between eating and sleeping passed more quickly. He fixated on certain words or phrases, easily sinking into meditative contemplation. Occasionally, he was jarred to attention, not realizing that he’d fallen asleep until he saw the wild eyes of a cleric or deacon fixed on him, taking cover behind a bookshelf or kneeling in strange fascination.  
  
Once, Aldrich awoke leaned forward in his chair, with his fingers wrapped around a cleric’s wrist, gripping it viciously. He heard his name called out by her uncertain, frantic voice. He was breathing slowly through his teeth, and she stood as far away as she could with her wrist held fast, her shoulders and hips angled as though she’d been trying to pull free.  
  
He realized that he was still in the cathedral library, rather than in the lightless, churning waters of his visions, and that he had, at the will of that _thing_ that lurked in him, lain hands on the sister whose voice had woken him. It had taken him over, and moved with the intent to tear the very soul from her and plunge it into the Deep itself. He felt the muscles of his throat expand involuntarily, as they would to accept food. His grip weakened, and she jerked back, pulling her hand away, and backed carefully toward the door, keeping her eyes on Aldrich until she felt safe to run.  
  
His instinct was to give chase.  
  
Aldrich leaned down to the floor and picked up the book he’d been reading, curling its pages back into shape between his fingers. His nails had grown, now that he studied them, and seemed harder to break. The ghostly scent of blood hounded him, and his body itched to stand up and hunt the poor cleric down. Was he to be nothing more than a beast?  
  
Through the night, he dreamed of the frail wrist of the cleric, twisted into the writhing Deep and swallowed up. In the morning, his meal was only meat, enough to compensate for the portion of bread and vegetables that were lacking. He was oddly pleased with it, but, as seemed to be the norm now, unsatisfied.  
  
  
  
VI.  
  
  
A few days later, Aldrich awoke in the middle of the night with Sulyvahn looming silently in the corner of his room and the cleric he’d attacked previously pinned beneath him, his hands clenched around her neck. He felt the Deep’s unnatural power still coursing through him, urging him to destroy her, to be its earthly maw and reave her soul and flesh from her. Saliva pooled in his mouth, and for a moment, he thought he could already taste her blood.  
  
He recoiled from her as his own mind took hold of him, and quickly pressed his fingers to the side of her neck, searching for her pulse. When he found it, he scrambled away from her and stared accusingly at Sulyvahn. “Why in hell are you standing there watching? She – she could have been – I…” Aldrich trailed off, sitting on his heels on the warped wooden floor. He couldn’t bear to say he could have killed her, framing it so dreadfully likely.  
  
Sulyvahn knelt and scooped up the unconscious cleric, departing, once again, with no answer.  
  
Aldrich stood up, his skinny legs shaking. There was blood on his hands, under his nails – he must have attacked her more viciously than he imagined. He raised his hands to inspect them, glistening and slick in the dark. It was the same scent he’d dreamed of. He couldn’t help but lick his fingers.  
  
  
  
VII.  
  
  
It took Aldrich far too long to return to sleep. He coiled in on himself, pulling his knees close to his chest. It was done. He had sinned. He’d given in and tasted her blood, and he couldn’t shake its taste from his mind, or the blessed lapse in his ever-present hunger. He should have been sickened.  
  
But now his hunger had direction. He wanted _this_. He thought of her neck, how small it felt in his hands. He should have been ashamed. He wished for her life, surely, though she was no friend or colleague of his.  
  
But then again, Aldrich wanted her back. He buried his face in threadbare sheets. He wanted to feel that power again, and learn what the Deep wanted with her, and with him.  
  
For the few hours he slept, he dreamed of her, and of throngs of people, and he could feel his arms, his fingers in the twisting waters as the Deep tore its victims apart.  
  
  
  
VIII.  
  
  
“Don’t tell me your hunger has left you all of a sudden,” Sulyvahn chided, watching Aldrich stare at his plate where it sat on the table.  
  
“Of course not,” Aldrich muttered, picking up the knife and turning it over in his hand. “It never leaves.” His voice came out distracted. The cooked meat, as enticing as it had been the previous morning, couldn’t hold his attention. It was, as the pontiff had determined, pointless to eat, wait, suffer, and sleep, only to begin the same cycle again.  
  
He’d had only the smallest taste of blood, the night before, but he couldn’t bear to think of eating anything – a chill ran through him – less. His hands clenched and unclenched themselves, and he wanted to thrust the dull knife into Sulyvahn’s chest, in the hope that he would bleed.  
  
“Perhaps I’m feeling ill.” Aldrich set the knife down again, and leaned against the wall behind him. “I don’t know what’s come over me,” he lied. He wouldn’t dignify Sulyvahn by admitting that he wanted what he’d so adamantly refused that night, but he looked longingly, as though Sulyvahn would glean what Aldrich wanted from his expression.  
  
The pontiff picked up the plate and silverware. A hint of disdain in his voice belied his faceless mask. “Very well, then. Do seek me out if you decide you’d rather not suffer so.”  
  
Of course, when Aldrich’s pride had worn itself thin enough, the bastard pontiff was nowhere to be found.  
  
The clerics were wary of him as he stalked through the halls. He asked the deacons, with as little desperation as he could muster, where they’d last seen Sulyvahn, and they pointed him down one hall or another, or toward some room, none of which contained hide or hair of him.  
  
At length, Aldrich returned to his room, eminently frustrated to find it, too, deserted. He pulled his legs up onto the meager bed and turned away from the door, groaning in impotent anger. His last course of action was to hope that sleep would dull the frightening edge of his hunger, or perhaps drive him mad enough to lose the sense of it.  
  
He dreamed of frantically clawing torn flesh into a shapeless mouth, of his whole body steeped in blood, until finally he was filled.  
  
  
  
IX.  
  
  
Aldrich was nearly senseless when he woke. He drifted in and out of consciousness, pangs of hunger driving him back to the world when he slipped too far. Sulyvahn wasn’t there, and Aldrich began to fear what he might resort to if the pontiff remained unreachable. He was so wretchedly empty, and he felt, without reservation, like he could kill a man barehanded.  
  
Finally, after minutes that felt like years, he heard footsteps in two uneven pairs approaching his door, a soft voice and a low one. He could distinguish their conversation as they neared the door.  
  
“The Deep grows restless, and your sacrifice will calm its raging waters.”  
  
A pause, and then a hesitant woman’s voice. “I – I understand, Pontiff.” A sound that may have been part of a sob was cut short by the creaking of the door.  
  
Aldrich sat up, swinging his legs free of the sheets as the pontiff ushered the cleric into the room. She wore no vestments, only the long, white undergarment that would have lain beneath them. His body tensed like an animal’s.  
  
“Good morning, Aldrich,” the pontiff greeted with facetious cheer. The cleric knelt on the floor, head bowed to hide her face. He drew the greatsword that hung always at his side, ethereal flames seeming to seep from it. Aldrich couldn’t hide his excitement as the pontiff brought the sword down on her neck, and it rolled into her lap, short hair disheveled.  
  
  
  
Aldrich all but leapt at her, pressing his mouth to the severed neck to drink his fill of her blood. It burned in his throat, which gaped to take in all it could hold. His body moved without him willing it to move, tearing her garment, driving his teeth into her and pulling away flesh, meat, that tasted like everything he’d ever desired.  
  
At some point, Sulyvahn sat down to clean his blade, and Aldrich knew he was watching, but he feasted shamelessly, driven by hunger that startled him with how far it surpassed his expectation. He devoured her piece by piece, until his body ached. He sat back on the bloody floor, breathless and thrilled, groaning at the weight of her flesh. It had been so long since he’d even appeased his hunger.  
  
The pontiff looked down at him, seemingly unmoved by the grotesque display. “Is this what you wanted, Aldrich?”  
  
The bloody cleric, vessel of the Deep, took a few deep breaths. “Yes,” he answered, low-voiced. His tongue ran over his teeth. “I – I can’t hold enough of it.”  
  
Sulyvahn looked at the ravaged corpse for a moment – he could see more bone than he’d thought. He lifted his mask to reveal a grinning mouth and the darkest eyes, and he knelt at Aldrich’s side. “Is that so?”  
  
Aldrich seemed conflicted. He brought a stained hand to his stomach, and looked shocked to find it jutting out from the hollow it had so recently occupied. “I’ve eaten all I can hold,” he explained, as if it were difficult to find the words, “but all I want is more.”  
  
The pontiff grasped Aldrich’s jaw gently in one large hand, and turned his face to meet his eyes. Sulyvahn’s face was twisted, but he looked indescribably pleased. His eyes were like tunnels to the end of the earth, and Aldrich felt his own flesh crawling, as though rearranging itself, as he stared into them. “You’ll have more, then. Go and sit.

  
  
Aldrich obeyed, grasping furniture as he rose to his feet and hoisted himself into the tall chair. It seemed inordinately small when the pontiff sat in it, but Aldrich didn’t nearly fill it. It seemed the short span of time between sitting on the floor and moving to the chair had alleviated some of the ache he felt, the uncanny sensation of stretching skin.  
  
He watched with interest as Sulyvahn carved into the dead sister’s leg with a smaller blade, as though he’d done it a hundred times before. It was true to say he wasn’t hungry anymore, not like he had been. But the thought of more of that transcendent meat pulled at Aldrich, fueling a want that sat unknowably deep in him.  
  
The pontiff stood, and leaned over Aldrich, offering a piece of meat from his hand. Aldrich raised his hand to take it, but Sulyvahn pressed it to his lips. Aldrich found it strangely – perhaps inappropriately – intimate, but accepted it with avarice.  
  
“As I thought, you had the Deep in you before you laid eyes on this place.” Sulyvahn roved over Aldrich with those lightless eyes before fixing him with a gaze, promptly offering new flesh after every piece Aldrich took in. “You’ll be a fearsome creature, an unparalleled devourer.”  
  
Aldrich liked the sound of it. Sulyvahn’s words ran together to him, but they were words of praise, and his mouth and throat and stomach were full of the flesh and blood he’d so ardently desired.  
  
When Sulyvahn’s immediate supply ran out, he rested a hand momentarily on Aldrich’s belly. It covered Aldrich’s midsection almost completely, but the pontiff still looked surprised by the evidence of Aldrich’s fullness. “I suspect you won’t stop until you contain her entirely.”  
  
He obligingly returned to the body on the floor, hacking at it and laying its meat on the wood of the table. It was within Aldrich’s reach, so Aldrich took pieces from it and ate them as he waited. Earlier, he’d been eating so quickly, swallowing pieces whole as though it came naturally to him. He found it still did.  
  
Sulyvahn fed Aldrich from his hands for what felt like hours, Aldrich himself surprised that the he could eat with the same ravenous speed for such a long span of time. The pontiff covered his face again before harvesting more flesh from the increasingly disarrayed skeleton that lay in a pool of drying blood on the floor of Aldrich’s room.  
  
Aldrich was enamored of the idea that it would seep in, and his quarters would smell of it permanently.  
  
He slowed down somewhat, gradually, and soon enough the pontiff was impatiently shoving flesh into his mouth as Aldrich groaned in protest. The pontiff placed a hand on him again, and it covered less of Aldrich than before. His fingers kneaded gently, which sent a jolt up Aldrich’s spine.  
  
“You ache, I’m sure, but such is the lot of a devourer of your make.” The pontiff kept up his pace, though Aldrich struggled to match it. “Like hunger, it’s something with which you must acquaint yourself.”  
  
Aldrich shifted under Sulyvahn’s hand, trying to find a more comfortable position for his body. The pressure was unbearable, almost, but there was some pleasing edge to it that kept him from trying to free himself. He ate, though his throat tightened in protest, and both men were surprised when nothing more remained to be eaten.  
  
Sulyvahn caressed Aldrich with both hands, while Aldrich took shallow breaths, feeling the weight of all the meat displace with each intake of air.  
  
“I don’t know what’s become of me.” Aldrich looked down at himself, swollen with flesh, his robes stained dark. His heart beat quick in his chest, tempted by the thought that this was merely the first sacrifice.  
  
  
  
The pontiff helped Aldrich back to his bed, where he stripped off as much of his bloodstained clothing as he dared. Sulyvahn gathered it as he left, and Aldrich lay down. He’d only woken a few hours ago, but already he was so tired. The weight of his meal moved him like a tide, and he let it pull him in. He dreamed of calm waters, and of thousands of sets of white bones buried in the seabed.  
  
When he awoke, he held up the mirror. His sharp teeth seemed to better fit his face, and his eyes, where they had been plainly grey, were black as the distant ocean.


End file.
